Glenn McDonald

DVD Picks: Aviatices, Satanic Cults and LeBron James

Glenn McDonald — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:33:58 +0000

‘Amelia,” starring Hilary Swank as famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart, is a perfectly serviceable, standard-issue Hollywood biopic that hits all the requisite notes and risks little. It’s an enjoyable movie experience and, at under two hours, admirably restrained in length. I only wish the movie, like its heroine, had a little more guts.

It’s a problem of form, really. “Amelia” is done about as well as this type of movie can be done – but that’s the problem. The celebrity biopic has become Hollywood’s most tired and predictable genre. If you recall, we were tipped to this problem in 2007 with the very funny mock-biopic “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.” “Walk” tackled the subgenre of the musical biopic, but its cautionary lessons can very easily be extrapolated – and, evidently, ignored.

It’s too bad, because “Amelia” has a lot going for it. There’s the terrific performance by Swank, who once again provides a virtual clinic on screen acting. She does some amazing technical work here, nailing the particular cadences and mannerisms of 1930s speech. The photography is beautiful – several bravura sequences show Amelia flying through electrical storms or diving recklessly to keep her plane from icing over.

But everything is jammed sideways into the conventional biopic template. You have your expositional voiceovers. Your sweeping and intrusive musical score. Your improbably declarative dialogue in which characters establish their motivations. When a suitor proposes marriage, for instance, Amelia’s reply – describing herself blissfully as a free-spirited “vagabond of the air” – isn’t anything anyone would actually say in that situation.

But it does sound like an excellent ninth draft of a screenplay. Scripts like this don’t trust the viewer to infer the moral of the story. Instead, it’s all provided in dialogue and musical cues, right before the didactic montage sequence. The real nadir of the genre may be last winter’s sadly deflated “Notorious,” which distilled the fascinating story of hip-hop star Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace to a procession of repetitive biopic riffs.

Hollywood desperately needs some visionary director to come in and reinvent the form. The weird and wily Bob Dylan alt-biopic “I’m Not There” was a step in the right direction. By artfully subverting biopic tropes – casting multiple actors in the lead role, say – director Todd Haynes gleefully sprinted off in a new direction entirely.

Extras on the “Amelia” DVD set include a good assortment of deleted scenes and some interesting archival newsreels.

Also new to DVD this week, ” The House of the Devil” is an explicitly old-school horror movie from director Ti West designed to look, sound and feel like a 1982 direct-to-video cult classic. Cult is the operative term here – “Devil” is directly inspired by the early ’80s media mini-craze for stories of Satanic cults preying on America’s teenagers.

Here’s another film in which form overwhelms content, but in this case it’s a good thing indeed. From title graphics to wardrobe choices to the 16-mm film stock, “Devil” reverently evokes those breathless ’80s horror flicks in which pretty young baby sitters make poor decisions regarding staircases, locked doors and kitchen knives.

Director West is genuinely faithful to the form – this isn’t some meta exercise like the “Scream” movies. West also employs the classic suspense strategies more or less invented by Alfred Hitchcock. A bomb under the table explodes – that’s surprise. A bomb under the table doesn’t explode – that’s suspense. “Devil” has one masterful 20-minute passage that’s almost unbearably tense. Only afterward do you realize that nothing actually happened.

The movie’s last act is sufficiently bloody, but doesn’t quite deliver – Satanism just isn’t as spooky as it used to be, I guess. But the real fun here is in “Devil’s” affectionate allegiance to the ’80s – veterans of the decade will enjoy those glorious feathered hairdos and high-waist acid wash jeans. (In a clever marketing gimmick, the filmmakers even issued some promotional copies of “Devil” on VHS.) Extras are modest – two brief production docs and some very disposable deleted scenes.

On the other end of the scary spectrum, the horror-comedy ” Zombieland” stars Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg as odd-couple road trippers navigating the wastes of an America ravaged by, yes, a zombie outbreak. En route to Hollywood, they meet a pair of resourceful sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) and briefly rely on the hospitality of an A-list movie star, playing himself in an extended cameo.

Very funny, very gory and spectacularly over-the-top, “Zombieland” achieves what it sets out after. Harrelson and Eisenberg have a good comedy tag team thing going, and the movie star cameo sequence has a couple dozen big laughs all by itself.

“Zombieland” is goofy fun and entirely satisfying, so long as you know what you’re getting into. If “House of the Devil” is the bomb not going off, “Zombieland” is the bomb that keeps exploding, forever. Extras include a couple production docs and commentary. Also stay for a final scene after the end credits.

On the off-chance you’re in the mood for something other than zombies, aviatrices or the 1980s, consider the fascinating and surprisingly poignant basketball documentary ” More Than a Game,” which charts the ascent of NBA superstar LeBron James and his high school teammates – the “Akron Fab Five.”

I lost interest in the pro game years ago, after life in the Triangle introduced me to the beauty of college basketball. (Hmm, “introduced” might not be the term. Relentlessly indoctrinated, maybe.) But “Game” has nothing to do with James’ pro career.

Seven years in the making, “Game” began as a class assignment for film student (and Akron native) Kristopher Belman. As the team rocketed to success, Belman followed along, befriended by the coach and players and given an access no one else could match.

Amazingly, the four players who constituted the core of the Akron team that took three national championships had been playing together since fourth grade. (They picked up their fifth starter in high school.) Led by the preternaturally talented James, they defeated powerhouse teams from coast-to-coast. As their coach Dru Joyce says, these were essentially national high school all-star teams, and he was fielding five kids from the neighborhood.

Filed under: Arts and Entertainment, News & Observer, NewsObserver.com

DVD Picks: Hindu Blues, Stitchpunk Animation and Paranormal Activity

Glenn McDonald — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:11:07 +0000

Raleigh News & Observer

Already a legend of low-budget horror, ” Paranormal Activity” is an object lesson in the power of viral marketing. Filmed for $15,000, its theatrical take after wide release on Halloween is $107 million, with an additional $10 million or so still coming in from the UK.

So why such astounding success? First, “Paranormal” is a scary ghost story with an effective gimmick: Like “The Blair Witch Project,” the film is presented as found footage, the record of a haunting caught on camera and left by the dearly departed victims.

But more important, “Paranormal Activity” was masterfully marketed, using online promotion techniques and a “platform release” strategy. The distributors opened the film initially in a small number of college towns, then relied on the audience to sell the picture via word-of-mouth and social media vectors – Facebook, Twitter, etc. Brilliant work, really.

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// ]]> Anyhoo, the movie is out this week on DVD and Blu-ray, where it’s likely to make another boatload of money. “Paranormal Activity” tells the story of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston, two young professionals in San Diego played by actors Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston. This is the first of several rabbit holes into which viewers will be dropped. Micah and Katie are happy in their new home, except for the weird noises downstairs, things that insist on going bump in the night. Every night.

Micah – day-trader, tech fetishist and requisite rational skeptic – decides the best way to document the phenomena is to set up a digital camera in the bedroom. This weirds out Katie for several reasons, understandably. But most important, Katie has a gut feeling that the camera will only provoke whatever is haunting them.

And, wow – when Katie’s right, she’s right. Things go from bad to much worse, each incident recorded in the creepy black light of the camera’s infrared lens. I don’t know about you, but ever since I was kid I’ve thought about ghosts most when I’m in the dark, under the covers, listening to bumps in the night.

Director Oren Peli makes canny use of the video camera gimmick. One creepy sequence shows Katie apparently sleepwalking as she stands menacingly over the sleeping Micah. Then the time counter in the corner of the frame fast forwards as Katie simply stands there, staring at him, for hours. It’s a spooky image, and a clever one.

On the DVD player, in the dubious comfort of your own home, the film has an additional resonance missing in theaters.

The single-disc DVD includes the filmmakers’ original ending, changed before wide release at the suggestion of producer Steven Spielberg. I think the original is more subtle and satisfying.

And now a word from the realm of animation. 2009 was a banner year for animated films, specifically animated films for grown-ups. Among the year’s triumphs – the dark fairy tale “Coraline,” the morally charged Israeli film “Waltz with Bashir,” and Pixar’s latest triumph, the sublime adventure “Up.”

Cycling to DVD are two more animated jewels. “9,” expanded by director Shane Acker from his own short film, is a riot of inventive imagery in the “stitchpunk” animation style.

In a post-apocalyptic future (we sure are seeing a lot of these lately), a rag doll comes to life to find that humanity has committed suicide. Rather messily, too. Designated only as “#9,” according to the stitching on his back, our hero finds that he is but one of a series of rag dolls, imbued by their now-dead creator with life force, and asked to carry forth into the future a rather critical series of parcels.

“9″ is most effective in its quieter moments, particularly in scenes of the wrecked future landscape, littered with dead technology and shrouded by a bruised sky.

Like “Up,” “9″ is an example of state-of-the-art computer graphics technology used to achieve an artistic vision. If the film’s innovative spirit seems confined to design at the expense of story, that’s all right. You can just move up the rental aisle and grab up ” Sita Sings the Blues,” my vote for best animated film of the year.

“Sita,” directed by American cartoonist and animator Nina Paley, is structured around an ancient Hindu fable and several animation styles, integrated torch songs by 1920s blues vocalist Annette Hanshaw, and a parallel modern-day story from director Paley that is largely autobiographical. In the director’s words, the film is “a tale of truth, justice and a woman’s cry for equal treatment.”

Paley did all the animation herself, using her home computer and an assortment of 2-D animation techniques. Threads of the story are assigned their own graphical treatment – the mythological sequences distinguished from the musical numbers; the shadow-puppet narration from the modern-day story. That it all hangs together is testament to Paley’s chops as a visual artist. That it’s also wistful, irreverent and genuinely funny is proof of Paley’s skill as a cartoonist, that most underappreciated of crafts.

Because of some arcane copyright issues regarding the old Hanshaw songs, Paley had to pay out-of-pocket to preserve the film’s musical numbers, and agree to some arbitrary distribution restrictions.

Admirably, Paley fought back. Using unorthodox distribution methods, such as free online downloads and the Creative Commons license (the same license Wikipedia operates under), Paley is relying on voluntary payments to augment any money she might see from the limited DVD pressing. (The DVD does include extras, including a 30-minute interview with Paley.) Watch for great things from Paley, whose tenacity has made her something of an icon in free-culture circles.

Posted in Arts and Entertainment, News & Observer, NewsObserver.com

In Which Virtual World Will You Choose To Spend What’s Left Of Eternity?

Glenn McDonald — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:25:46 +0000

NPR Monkey See

You won’t read about it in the headlines, but deep in the high-tech corporate campus of the Research Triangle Park, in Durham, North Carolina, desperate refugees fight for survival against mutant cannibals in a dystopian wasteland where civilization is just a dim memory.

No, it’s not a hyperbolic recession metaphor (at least not exclusively), it’s Fallen Earth, the post-apocalyptic virtual world created and maintained by RTP game company Icarus Studios. Fallen Earth, you see, is a video game — one in which thousands of players play simultaneously via the Internet and their personal computers.

Technically speaking, Fallen Earth is an MMORPG. That stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game — surely the industry’s most unwieldy acronym. Launched this fall after an extensive beta test period, Fallen Earth is hoping to capture a corner of the MMO market left open by established games like EverQuest and World Of Warcraft.

Frankly, they could be onto something: end-of-the-world scenarios seem to be on our collective mind these days. Recent and upcoming films like 2012, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the animated adventure 9 are upping the ante in the disaster flick category. Clearly, we are sublimating our collective anxieties about global warming, pandemics and terrorism.

But don’t despair: while MMO games like Fallen Earth project our fears, they may also be pointing to a potential solution and an escape from the aforementioned apocalypse. Let’s say civilization does end — via virus, radiation or ocean waves. Why not simply upload your personality as a ROM construct to your favorite virtual world?

Okay, there are some logistical hurdles here. For starters, we’ll need to bury the server farms along with several trillion batteries. But I’m the idea guy — I’m thinking big picture. And no matter what your way of life, I’m convinced that there is a virtual world into which you could plausibly retreat in the event the world you currently inhabit is burned, flooded or otherwise rendered unavailable to you. And I can help you find it.

Check out these virtual worlds listed below, all of which are actual MMO games. (OK, all but one — see if you can spot the fake.) Which would you choose?

Club Penguin: Use your penguin avatar to waddle your way through various puzzles and games.

Urban Dead: Live forever fighting zombies as a human survivor, or eating brains as a zombie. Your call.

Monopoly City Streets: Buy and sell virtual real estate on real-world streets using Google Map images.

Lots and lots more, after the jump.

Toontown Online: Fight back against hostile corporate takeover by deploying classic cartoon “gags” — banana peels, seltzer bottles, dropping anvils, etc.

Ran Online: Fight undead undergraduates from rival universities.

Continuum: Abandon the third dimension entirely and live forever in a frictionless 2-D cosmic world.

Third Life: Try, try again in a virtual world exclusively for those who have managed to screw up both their real life and Second Life.

Sociolotron: Fight monsters, establish a dynasty and have virtual sex. (Link NSFW.)

Kingdom of Loathing: Fight monsters, establish a dynasty and get drunk. (link barely SFW)

Hello Kitty Online: Help Hello Kitty fight a “mysterious and malevolent power.”

Monster Farm Online: Breed and raise specialized monsters, then fight them.

Pirates of the Burning Sea: Swashbuckle your way through the Caribbean circa 1720.

Tantra Online: Help your tribe defeat monsters from Hindu mythology.

Blackout Rugby: Manage a virtual New Zealand rugby team until the end of time.

* Third Life isn’t real, although it should be — too bad some cybersquatter is sitting on the domain.

Posted in NPR Monkey See, Science & Technology

Video games to give or receive

Glenn McDonald — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:42:49 +0000

NewsAndObserver.com

This holiday season, why not give the gift that, if properly selected, will hijack your loved one’s life for several months, devouring all discretionary time?

The trick, of course, is selecting the right game – especially for children and younger gamers. You’ll lose a lot of cool points if you get your niece Cooking Mama 3 when what she really wanted was Command & Conquer 3.

Below is a list of some of the best recent games for gift-giving, arranged by ESRB Rating. Most of these titles have something to offer children and adults, with a bonus pick for grown-up gamers who might be interested in blowing up space zombies.

Little Big Planet: Game of the Year edition (PS3; Rated E)

Little Big Planet, which won dozens of awards last year, is a category unto itself. An alternate-dimension platforming game, LBP lets players of any age traverse themed worlds which – in terms of the game’s story – represent nothing less than the creative impulse of the cosmos. Trippy, huh?

The real adventure is that players can create levels and entire worlds, then share them with other players over the PlayStation Network. Adults will appreciate the sophisticated game design philosophy underneath it all; kids will simply love the idea of a cosmic sandbox. This Game of the Year edition adds bonus levels and downloadable content packs. Highly recommended. (Bonus for hand-held gamers: LBP is out for the PlayStation Portable as well.)

MySims Agents (Wii; Rated E)

Sims auxiliary games have a crazy charm, with their blocky animation and focus on social interaction. MySims Agents goes in a different direction, though, offering a much more linear, quest-and-puzzle-based adventure. A player starts as a neighborhood digital sleuth (Wikipedia Brown?) and wind up commanding a team of international spies. It’s good for gamers who are into this kind of item-fetching, dialogue-tree gaming, and there’s nothing here for parents to fret about.

Space Invaders Extreme 2 (DS;

Rated E)

The original arcade classic gets another makeover with the sequel to last year’s inspired shoot-’em-up for the Nintendo DS. Those old enough to remember the original will enjoy how Extreme expands the concept in just about every direction. Color-coded invaders, new weapons, varied attack patterns and frantic boss fights make the original game seem glacial. Kids will dig the simplicity and instant-gratification of it all. Excellent for airports and long car rides.

Ratchet and Clank (PS3, Rated E10)

Rivaling Little Big Planet for the most wildly creative game on the PS3, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time continues the franchise’s deft combination of cartoon action and puzzle-solving. This latest iteration ups the ante with some delightfully clever time-manipulation puzzles for Clank. Meanwhile, Ratchet flies across the universe to shoot it out with intergalactic baddies. R&C hits the sweet spot – friendly enough for kids, smart enough for adults.

Tornado Outbreak (PS3/Wii/X360; Rated E10)

While somewhat less exciting than the pre-release hype promised, Tornado Outbreak is still a unique gaming experience for players of all ages. The basic gist: Players get to see what it’s like to be a tornado – can’t argue with that. In stylized animation form, Zephyr the tornado tears up farmhouses and silos to grown bigger and stronger. Some clever game mechanics mix up the action by having Zephyr fight rival elementals – fire beasties, for instance.

Nerf N-Strike Elite (Wii; Rated E10)

Here’s a generous package for that young gamer in your life who likes his Nerf guns and video games and would like to play with both at once. Not to gender-stereotype, but it seems young boys of a certain age are hard-wired for this stuff. The gimmick here: You insert the Wiimote into the included Nerf gun and aim at the screen, shooting gallery style. Swap out the Wiimote, and you’ve got a functional suction-cup Nerf shooter for those backyard turf wars. Nerf makes it as gentle as possible. On screen, the bullets are foam darts; the enemies are robots and no blood is spilled.

Dead Space Extraction (Wii; Rated M)

Fans of the original Dead Space will appreciate this variation on the franchise’s horror-in-space theme. Extraction is a rail-shooter like you’ve never seen – with an engaging story, strategic elements, astounding visuals and maximized spookiness. The game’s famous strategic dismemberment system remains, and using the Wiimote to blast space zombies is exactly as much fun as it sounds. That’s a hard “M” rating, by the way. Extraction is seriously scary and decidedly not for kids.

Posted in News & Observer, Science & Technology

All I Want for Christmas…

Glenn McDonald — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 02:10:56 +0000

PopMatters.com

Dear Santa,

As you know, I’ve been a relatively good boy this year, certainly as compared to last year. And now that my community service is done and many of the civil suits settled, I feel like I’m finally working with a clean slate!

We’ve not always communicated efficiently in the past, and so I’m keeping this year’s wish list short and “civil-tongued” — I think that’s the term you used in your reply to last year’s letter. You’ll note that this time around, per your request, there are no overt threats against Mrs. Claus or the elves if I don’t get my way. I am willing to make some changes if you are.

So here’s my Christmas wish list, please let me know if you need any further clarifications, invoice numbers, or celebrity home addresses. Thanks, Nick! You’re the greatest!

All I want for Christmas:

Please teleport Tyra Banks to the exact geographical center of the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve. I finally caught an episode of America’s Next Top Model, the latest in America’s new pornography of cruelty-and-humiliation-based “reality” programming, and that woman deserves some time alone. I figure it’ll take her a few months to find her way out, and this should at least put the show on temporary hiatus for a while. It’s OK by me if you want to give her some warm clothes and food or whatever. It’s also OK by me if you don’t.

Do that sneaky fly-around-the-planet-in-a-night thing you do and switch the reels at all the theaters opening King Kong so that millions of people globally will see Syriana instead. Hey, I like Pete Jackson as much as the next guy, but wouldn’t it be refreshing to have Syriana top the box office reports? And then wouldn’t it be fun to watch the citizens of the world achieve a collective moment of clarity, rise up in a series of bloodless revolutions, and tear down the Western military-industrial-oil complex? I think that would be fun.

While we’re on the subject, any way you can get my government to stop lying to me in 2006? Long shot request, I know. Thanks, anyway.

See if you can get Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces to accept my marriage proposal. This is, of course, my annual Rock Chick Crush request. If you check your files, you’ll see that over the years I’ve asked for your assistance on this matter with Siouxsie Sioux, Sinead O’Connor, Tanya Donelly, Laura Ballance, Liz Phair, Melissa Auf der Maur, Shirley Manson, Cibo and Matto, that crazy girl from Elastica, Ms. Dynamite, Poe, the character Lisa Bonet played in High Fidelity, and, um, Billie Joe Armstrong. I am willing to make a lot of exceptions for Billie Joe Armstrong.

Really and sincerely — do whatever you have to do to get Dave Chappelle back into the Comedy Central studios to make more Chappelle’s Show episodes. To the extent that I understand what’s going on, I totally back Dave and his choice to walk away from the soul-crushing Hollywood machine, because Dave is a genius and I defer to his judgment on these matters. Unfortunately, Dave is a genius, and so he needs to get back to work regardless, because that’s what geniuses do. Paradoxical, isn’t it? Please figure it out and get us a Season Three, thanks. (As a Plan B, give the reins to Sarah Silverman. Have you seen her pitch video? Maybe while you’re at it, see if she’ll marry me, too.)

I actually could use some socks this year, thanks. Also, one of those sonic toothbrushes, and a new motorcycle.

Can you please somehow convince all the old, dumb, unfunny syndicated newspaper cartoonists to retire, so that all of the young, smart, funny cartoonists looking for work can get published? That would be nice. It’s puzzled me for a long while — how is it that every other genre of entertainment turns over constantly with new blood and ideas, and yet three generations of my family have been skipping over 90 percent of the funny pages while eating our breakfast cereal? The exception here, of course, is Marmaduke. Because that dog is huge, and the joke somehow never gets old!

Round up all the studio executives responsible for canceling Arrested Development and have them meet me in the alley behind my house. I want to have a talk with them. May as well also grab up the knuckleheads who cancelled Joss Whedon’s Firefly and bring them along, too.

This is such a dumb coincidence that I almost hate to mention it, but I really do need two new front teeth, having lost them in the Ron Artest incident last year in Detroit. You and I both know that I did the right thing there, but we Pistons fans are somehow still getting grief about the whole thing, and meanwhile I look like one of the Hanson brothers. Maybe a Paul Wall grill, and a bottle of some that stuff DJ Screw used to drink when remixing and/or undergoing dental surgery, just to take the edge off a little bit.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all, and a swift kick in the ass to Spielberg and Lucas so that we get the new Indiana Jones movie while Harrison Ford can still memorize his dialogue. Yes, I know I’m obsessed with this, but someone has to light a fire here, and it may as well be me. Or, more to the point, you.

Well, thanks in advance, Santa. Say “hello” to Rudolph for me, and to that weird kid you got in the shop that still wants to be a dentist (maybe he can help with the front teeth thing?) Let me know if you guys still want in on that time-share condo in Miami — I’m guessing you could use a little sun. Good luck with the Big Trip, and keep an eye peeled in case Tyra starts wandering north. It’d be just like her to show up on the porch, trying to bum a ride back to L.A. Honestly! Some people!

Yr pal,

Glenn